he rarer items in all important
specialities. It is the general plan on the part of every follower of
particular lines to commence, very often casually, by bringing home
from time to time a few volumes on a certain topic, or in a given
class of literature, or by one or two of a school of writers; and such
a proceeding succeeds tolerably well, till the owner makes discovery
of volumes positively essential to his object, and unattainable save
by a heavy outlay--perchance not even to be had at any price. It is
nearly always the _lacunae_ for which we yearn; one or two of our
richer friends have them, and we have not. What we possess anybody can
get in a morning's walk; we find that we have travelled a long
distance, and have come to an _impasse_. It is very seldom indeed that
a man is satisfied with the cheaper and commoner articles in a series,
if he is aware of the existence of those which just constitute the
corner-stones of such a collection as his.

On the contrary, by the process of sampling or picking out here and
there, now and again, a book or a set of books which chance or
circumstances may throw in our path, we may gradually acquire a
caseful of most desirable specimens, against which it is out of the
question to raise any charge of incompleteness, where incompleteness
is the governing aim. Book-buying under these conditions is a humour.
We are at liberty to take or leave. Because we conceive a fancy for a
work by this or that author, we feel under no obligation to
accommodate every scrap which he has printed, or which his friends or
followers have penned. The object of our personal selection suffices
us; and there perhaps we begin and we end. It is our humour.

The auctioneers' and booksellers' catalogues of the present day supply
an instructive demonstration of the gradual withdrawal from the market
of many thousands of articles, in Early English literature more
particularly, which at one time seemed to be of fairly frequent
recurrence. They have been taken up into public collections all over
the world; and the very few copies, not to speak of unique examples,
which time had spared, are beyond the reach of the private purchaser
of to-day. We have only to study with attention the Heber and other
leading records of former libraries existing in this and other
countries to become convinced that the facilities for acquiring an
approximately complete library of the rarer books grow narrower year
by year.

There